Plasticity Research Paper

Neuroplasticity interests me because it shows how we as human beings learn. Plasticity of the brain is necessary for learning. It allows the brain to adapt to be able to store the new information it is given. The brain is the most plastic at young ages. Children are much more able to learn new skills due to this. This is because their brains are not very developed until later in life. The plasticity allows their brains to develop more. This is why it is important to teach skills to children at young ages. Plasticity is seen in patients with brain damage. Although a piece of their brain might be compromised, the neurons in the brain are able to make new connections to allow the individual to complete tasks in daily life. I think this is interesting, because it gives us an insight to the way connections form in the brain, and how it is constantly changing, allowing us to take in information.
Article Summaries
With the goal of discovering the plasticity of the …show more content…
They were placed into two different groups. One group was to practice an average three and a half hours each week for more than three years before the test, and the other group was to have no practice with the abacus previous to the test. To view the results, magnetic resonance imaging, commonly referred to as an MRI, was used to take pictures of the brain to view gray matter amounts. There was found to be significantly more gray matter in the brains of those who had no practice prior to the examination. As the amount of practice increased, the amount of white matter generally increased as well. Training increases the amount of white matter because it speeds up the signal traveling between neurons in the brain, forcing the brain to create more links between neurons and coat the axon terminals with myelin sheaths. (Li, Wang, Hu, Liang, and Chen,